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b-hebrew - Re[2]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29)

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  • From: Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG
  • To: furuli AT online.no, b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re[2]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29)
  • Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 16:45:43 -0500 (EST)


Dear Rolf,

Let's look at two English sentences:

1. This morning I read the newspaper.
2. Every morning I read the newspaper.

Here, to my mind, we have two different tenses or TAMs which happen to
have acquired the same form by some historical accident - in this case
they are actually pronounced differently (like "red" in 1 and "reed"
in 2).

Would you agree that the verb is a simple, perfective past tense in 1
and some kind of present tense, imperfective and habitual in 2? Or
would you claim that for this and a few other verbs (e.g. "let",
"put") there is no simple past tense and no simple present tense
(except in the 3rd person singular?!) but only one combined tense?

Similarly with Hebrew. Simple yiqtol and jussive have the same form in
many cases, but they remain semantically distinct. True, one needs the
context to disambiguate them (a strong argument for a discourse
approach, in my opinion), but this does not mean that speakers thought
of them as synonymous.

Could it not be that the one form weqatal represents two originally
quite distinct tenses or TAMs which have come together because of some
phonological mechanism or Masoretic regularisation but retain distinct
meanings?

Peter Kirk




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